136th Avenue To Be Made Into Highway Bypass

May 24, 1985|By Jon Marcus, Transportation Writer

Despite a dubious reaction by Broward County`s planning council, 136th Avenue between Sunrise Boulevard and State Road 84 will be widened to six lanes and used as a temporary bypass for the Sawgrass Expressway.

Construction on the avenue is set to begin July 1, officials said.

The $172.5 million expressway will be finished in about a year. But a major interchange designed to connect the Sawgrass with Interstates 75 and 595 will not be finished for at least three years, and expressway traffic needs a bypass to State Road 84. The best alternative is 136th Avenue, planners said.

When the I-595/I-75 interchange is opened, 136th Avenue will return to its role as a local road -- still six lanes wide instead of the current two.

The Sawgrass Expressway will stretch 23 miles from State Road 84 north and then east to Powerline Road. It is a half-mile from 136th Avenue; more than 50,000 cars a day are expected to use the toll road by 1988.

Planning council members, who said they have been bombarded with complaints from city officials and neighbors on 136th Avenue, invited representatives of the Sawgrass engineering firm to fill them in on Thursday.

``We`re working with these homeowners and that`s basically where we stand,`` Ron Smith of PRC Engineering said about residents of the single-family New Orleans subdivision. The bypass also runs beside a trailer park.

There, said planning council member John Gibbs, ``If a person were to put his arm out of the window, chances are he`d get hit.``

But Smith said the six-lane bypass will be 7 feet, 3 inches from the nearest private property, with landscaping and a sidewalk.

The planning council oversees rights-of-way for roads in Broward County, but the 136th Avenue bypass has already been approved and designed.

Intersections at Sunrise Boulevard and State Road 84 have also been widened.

``Anything less . . . might jeopardize the (ability) of the expressway to pay back bonds,`` said Bob Edelstein of PRC. ``If we have a less-than-adequate facility along 136th Avenue, it would discourage people from using the Sawgrass Expressway.``